1. Field of the Invention
The invention is of a cleaning process and cleaning compositions effective for the extraction of contaminants including radionuclides, herbicides, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and heavy metals from interior and exterior surfaces, including the substrate of such surfaces, and is most effective in cleaning difficult to clean surfaces such as porous surfaces, and irregular surfaces into which the contaminants may migrate and lodge, and surfaces of particulates. Cleaning is effected to such a depth below the surface and into the substrate and to such an extent that the cleaned surfaces do not pose an environmental or health hazard and meet current regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC) relating to standards for decontamination.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the growth of industry, a significant amount of hazardous waste products and products formerly regarded as useful but now recognized as hazardous have entered the environment. These hazardous materials are frequently present as contaminants on surfaces of equipment, installations of all kinds, civil works, soil, and other like items.
For example, a significant amount of radioactive waste, in the form of radionuclides, is present in nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons production plants, mining and milling equipment used for uranium mining, and in apparatus in the medical area where radioactive isotopes are used. The presence of these radionuclides, which contaminate equipment including pumps, pipelines, valves, concrete foundations, and all other equipment and structures with which the radionuclides have come into contact, now pose a serious health problem since their radioactivity is known to be carcinogenic. To qualify as a decontaminated facility, the EPA requires that the level of radioactivity from radionuclides be reduced to less than 2,000 disintegrations per minute (DPM).
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were once widely used industrial chemicals, especially as insulating or hydraulic fluids in electrical capacitors, transformers, vacuum pumps, gas-transmission turbines, machinery, and various other devices and products. Their chemical stability and nonflammability contributed to their commercial usefulness. However, it has since been found that PCBs are carcinogens and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently lists PCBs and any surfaces or equipment containing PCBs as hazardous. Consequently, these chemicals are no longer recommended or used in new applications. However, a large amount of existing capital equipment, installed before the listing of PCBs as hazardous, contains PCBs. These installations pose a hazard whenever a spillage of PCBs occurs thereby contaminating the surrounding area or whenever routine repairs expose workers or the environment to PCBs.
While it is desirable to remove PCBs and dispose of these in a suitable hazardous waste facility, PCBs are not easily removed from apparatus or spilled areas because of their capability to enter into the tiniest of pores and microscopic voids and spaces in surfaces with which they come into contact. For example, in transformers which frequently contain wood, paper, metal joints, and electrical components with minute crevices, the PCBs soak into pores and microscopic voids in the steel and concrete and fill the tiniest of microscopic spaces such as pores and microscopic voids, and the like, in metals. When PCBs have spilled onto a surface, such as a concrete surface, the PCBs over time will soak into pores and microscopic voids in the concrete and contaminate the concrete to well below the exposed surface. Current techniques that merely clean the surface of concrete that has been exposed to the PCBs for a long period of time are not able to adequately clean the surface and do not reach PCBs held in the substrate below the surface in the pores and microscopic voids. Moreover, once surface cleaning has been completed, PCBs leach from the pores and microscopic voids to the surface over time due to the effect of a concentration gradient. Thus, the surface becomes recontaminated and further cleaning is necessitated. Likewise, while the bulk of the PCBs can be readily drained from some PCB-containing equipment, the residual PCB contaminant in pores, microscopic voids, crevices, and joints is not easily removed. It is found that upon refilling the drained apparatus with a replacement fluid for PCBs, PCBs will continue to leach from surfaces of the apparatus into the replacement fluid thereby contaminating it and rendering it hazardous.
Likewise, heavy metals have been identified as hazardous to human health and the EPA requires their removal from environments where they pose a health hazard. Like PCBs and radionuclides, heavy metals have the capability to migrate into pores, joints, crevices, and microscopic voids in interior and exterior surfaces and thereby cause contamination in the substrate to well below the apparent surface of any apparatus, device, or ground surface with which they come into contact. Mere surface cleaning is therefore ineffective to remove heavy metals contamination from substrates.
Certain pesticides and herbicides are also now known to be hazardous to human health. These compositions contaminate surfaces and substrates, such as concrete, but more especially particulate surfaces, such as soil, clay, gravel, and the like.
There is a need for methods and cleaning compositions for the removal of contaminants including radionuclides, PCBs, herbicides, pesticides, and heavy metals from porous and non-porous interior and exterior surfaces, particulate surfaces, and surfaces having minute spaces, crevices, pores, or microscopic voids into which these contaminants migrate and from which they are not readily extractable. Further, the method and cleaning compositions should desirably not only extract these contaminants from well below the surface to be cleaned, but should extract these to such a level that any remaining contaminants do not pose a hazard, i.e., a surface and its substrate cleaned of PCBs would meet EPA regulations for reclassification from a hazardous to a non-hazardous material; a surface and its substrate cleaned of heavy metals, herbicides, or pesticides, would meet the EPA's TCLP standard setting the upper limit for their concentration; and a surface and its substrate cleaned of radionuclides would test at less than 2,000 DPM. The method and cleaning compositions should also desirably extract these contaminants without significant surface damage or scarring. Further, the method and cleaning compositions should desirably extract these contaminants with a minimum amount of hazardous waste byproduct which must be disposed of and, in the case of radionuclides, the byproduct waste should preferably be water soluble to assist in ease of disposal. Finally, cleaning compositions should desirably not be flammable.